(523b) The University Power Plant: a Readily Accessible Remote Learning Platform

Combined heat and power (CHP) or cogeneration is critical to the economic viability of many industries, including fuels, chemicals, plastics, paper, and ferrous and nonferrous metals. U.S. investment in new CHP is expected to remain > $10 billion/year, and there are many ongoing projects in existing CHP systems resulting in substantial dollar savings through optimal energy management schemes.

CHP systems provide an excellent platform for students to study thermodynamics, certain unit operations and process design principles, optimization, data reconciliation, and emissions control. Even better, many Universities have ready (albeit remote) access to such a system on their own campus. At LSU, we are opening our newer (commissioned 2005, 20 MW, $20 MM) cogeneration system to the world of engineering education through real-time data delivery using formats which can communicate with virtually any control/data acquisition system and then broadcast compressed data via the net. Easy to use (from Excel) educational modules have been developed which make use of these data to teach the above-mentioned topics in classes ranging from introductory Sophomore-level to capstone design.

This remote educational platform also offers students the opportunity to make real-dollar energy management decisions on a complex yet easily visualized system, where students must consider tradeoffs in cost minimization and operability. It can therefore become a unique tool for engineering economics education.